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Constantine DovrolisGeorgia Institute of Technology

constantine@gatech.edu

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Outline• What is this workshop about?

• The evolution of research ideas and industry transformations that led to this workshop

• Workshop objectives

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Enterprise customer

Transit Provider

Transit Provider

Enterprise customer

Content Provider

Content Provider

Tier-1 network

Tier-1 network

Tier-1 network

What is this workshop about?

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What is this workshop about?

• Internet as a network of networks (Autonomous Systems)– Subject of Networking research

• Internet as a graph (AS-level graph)– Subject of Graph Theory research

• Internet as a networked market– Subject of Economics research

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But this workshop is also about• Real businesses, real money..– Transit providers (Level3, Cogent, ..)– Access providers (Comcast, Verizon, ..)– Content providers (Google, Yandex, ..)– Content Distribution Networks (Akamai, ..)– Internet Exchange Points (Equinix, ..)

• Regulatory bodies (e.g., FCC) and some hard policy questions – See Network Neutrality debate..

• Real people and their Internet experience

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The evolution of ideas/events that led to this workshop:

• Disclaimer: This is my own, biased view of this evolution

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The prehistoric era of the Internet(till about 20 years ago..)

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Topology modeling in the pre-historic era

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Followed by the Internet commercialization transition in 1995

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Early attempts to model Internet topology realistically (1996-7)

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At about the same time, “Internet economics” started attracting attention

Connectivity in the commercial InternetJ Cremer, P Rey, J Tirole The Journal of Industrial Economics, 2000

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A breakthrough in Internet topology modeling took place in 1999

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Followed by a rich literature in graph theory and network science about scale-free graphs

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But most of that work does not consider the various economic (and other) objectives that

drive Internet connectivity

Until the following paper in 2002..

This breakthrough created a strong connection between Internet topology models, economics

and network formation games

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At about the same time, the networking community started measuring and modeling the

Internet as an evolving economic ecosystem

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And while the research community was blending together networking, economics and graph theory,

the industry was going through MAJOR transformations..

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• Internet content originating mostly from CDNs• Global penetration of Internet Exchange Points

– Reducing peering costs and simplifying interconnections• Internet densification and “flattening”• Massive drop in Internet transit prices (price war?)• Consolidation of Internet transit providers• Major disputes between Tier-1 transit providers (e.g.,

Level3 vs Cogent in 2005)• Major disputes between Access and Content

providers/CDNs (e.g., Level3 vs Comcast in 2010)• Network neutrality debate: should ISPs charge

differently depending on content? Should they charge content providers?

Bill Norton’s book/papers describe these transformations very clearly

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What does this all mean?Workshop Objectives

• The ground is ready for some truly cross-disciplinary work in the area of Internet Economics– Bring together Networking, Economics, Network

Science

• Real potential for major impact that can affect– Two-three billions of users?– Thousands of Internet-related companies?

• Plus, some new and interesting problems in each of the previous disciplines– Fertile ground to develop completely new

methods?

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A final note: How to avoid the “confusion of languages”?

• Our languages are very different:– Economics, networking,

theoretical CS, graph theory

– Can we communicate somehow?

– If we manage to communicate, the result can be larger than the sum of its parts